Mayoral candidate Tony Buzbee’s uphill battle to win mayor’s race

HOUSTON – Dec. 14 is the date of the runoff election for Houston Mayor and several other races in our region.

Tony Buzbee is a guest on this week’s Houston Newsmakers with Khambrel Marshall and says he knows he is an underdog in his effort to unseat Mayor Sylvester Turner but says it’s familiar territory for him.

“That’s why we have a hundred people in our campaign office right now on the telephone,” Buzbee said. “That’s why we have 100 people block walking as we speak. We know what it takes. It’s just a matter of making it happen.”

Buzbee talks about why he thinks Turner has failed in his four years as the city’s CEO and what he says he’ll do to make a difference.

Crime Stoppers and HPD on holiday hoaxes and how to avoid them

There were hundreds of calls to local authorities about attempted kidnappings and human trafficking scares. The problem is, they were hoaxes that took away from the real work of policing our community.

“We don’t want people to become paranoid,” said Rania Mankarious, CEO of Crime Stoppers of Houston. “We don’t want them to feed into a false narrative that ultimately overtime when it’s continually disproven (sic), people start to toss these ideas out the window saying human trafficking is not really an issue here. Well, yes it’s not an issue in that way.”

James Dale is Commander of the Houston Police Department Vice Division and says the false alarms are a dangerous distraction.

“You can blast it out to thousands and thousands of people and they, in turn, do the same and then you’ve got a whole city saying, ‘Hey, this is what’s occurring in Montgomery County, this is what’s occurring in the city and it’s not happening.’ And I just don’t want it to detract from the real focus of what we’re trying to do here at HPD with Human Trafficking,” Dale said.

Year-end advice on fine-tuning your financial roadmap

The year-end is not only a time to celebrate holidays but also a perfect time to get your financial house in order. Richard Rosso is the Director of Financial Planning for RIA Advisors and says doing financial housekeeping is like cleaning under the bed.

“Who wants to do it?” he asked. “But sooner or later you’ve got to do it. Once you get into a groove what I’m finding is people really embrace it cause it just like shining light on something and all of sudden it’s easier.”

Rosso also provides details on five tips that can make your financial roadmap much smoother as you head into 2020:

1). Examine beneficiaries on all retirement accounts and life insurance.